Today in Korean history

1936 -- The daily Dong-A Ilbo publishes a picture of Korean Olympic marathon gold medal winner Sohn Kee-chung with the Japanese flag on his chest erased. Sohn participated in the Berlin Olympics representing Japan, as Korea was a colony of the archipelago nation at the time. The Japanese regime shut the newspaper down but later allowed it to publish again after it fired the journalist responsible and ran an apology.

1948 -- North Korea holds a general election to establish a separate government. South Korea had held its own election in May of that year.

1999 -- The Ministry of Information and Communication says more than 20 million people own mobile phones.

2000 -- The government releases a list of 63 prisoners of conscience to be sent to communist North Korea. Jailed during the 1950-53 Korean War and refusing to accept the capitalist South as their home, they were bused to the North on Sept. 2. Their repatriation was made as a result of an inter-Korean summit in June, when South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed to cooperate for reunification and increase social and economic exchanges.

2008 -- President Lee Myung-bak holds a summit meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Seoul and asks Beijing to refrain from forcibly repatriating North Korean defectors in consideration of their human rights.

2009 -- South Korea's first space rocket launch fails to place a scientific satellite into orbit.

2015 -- South and North Korea produce an agreement on defusing heightened tensions in a dramatic breakthrough after days of intensive high-level talks. Pyongyang expressed regret over its land mine attack and promised to make efforts toward ending provocations.

2017 -- Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong is sentenced to five years in prison on charges of bribery, embezzlement and other allegations in a massive corruption scandal that led to the ouster of former President Park Geun-hye. Lee is freed from jail in February 2018 after an appellate court hands him 2 1/2 years in prison with a stay of execution for four years. (END)